Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue

If happy little bluebirds fly

Beyond the rainbow, why oh why can't I

She's a menace to a clean outfit, room, and schedule. She'll knock down your walls and let the light flood every corner. 

There are clouds in my mind.  The kind you would find sulking around over the moors in a Jane Austen novel.  I bat at them, try to shoo them away, but they persist.

A glint of shining blue catches my eye beyond the grey and its little lady lynn fluttering whimsically here or there.  She is a bowling ball of a thing, but whips and whirls as light and delicate as a bubble.  I love her.  Her chirping charms me.  I want to join her, but the low lying clouds slither around my ankles and shift into heavy chains that keep me earth bound.  Lead me to the rock that is higher than I. 

Its not really who I think it is.  The neighbor, girlfriend,or estranged acquaintance, but a 3 headed demon of bitterness, envy and pride.  My opponent is in the ring with boxing gloves on taunting me while I try to shield the children's eyes from its hideous form.  I try buckling Cora in the car seat and her screaming protests begin to compete with the hissing from the ring.  Ender's whining and complaining gets caught among the lying and the jeering coming from the spiritual beast.  I plow forward to nap time.

Its at nap time that the house quiets and the fight can get serious.  You open your Bible, bow your head and glove up. 

When she fixes her gaze, her eyes are chiseled stone set under a pale smooth cliff.  But she is afraid of dragons. However, we know her heart to be stout like a dwarf, joyful like a hobbit and deep like the elves.  So... Zander showed her this clip tonight before bedtime.  He cried....no surprise there.

But he also cried with a father's proud and sentimental love when he found a top female wrestler that reminded him of Cora.  I'll have to post an interview of her sometime.

One night, like many, Zander tied on the apron strings.  He's top chef like his mama.  I could excuse myself by saying I'm pregnant and oxygen and chocolate are the only things I really want to be inhaling, but I can't.  Pregnant or not, I'd rather be doing something else than cooking.
Waste not want not.  He gathered broccoli from the garden, broccoli that had already opened into tiny yellow flowers.  Bubbling and melting in the next pan over was a lot of garlic, a lot of butter, a lot of lemon juice and just enough salt.   The blossoms on each their own pale green stem formed a perfect broom for sweeping up the addicting buttery sauce into our wide panned mouths.   Kids were ignored as they chewed their chicken in the next room, but I finally came to my senses and thought it would be nice to share the bounty.  Ender with the most refined palate of a four year old I know, lapped it up and even Cora ate it.  I think the bees must have left a little honey on each flower for the yellow haired girl. 

I noticed a bee with tattered wings.  It still hovered and hummed along without slowing.   How does a bee fly?  Its a myth now.  That bees shouldn't be able to fly.  God gave away just a little bit more of His secret and now we see that bees are not supposed to be studied against the flight mechanisms of an airplane.  Their wings are flexible, not rigid, for instance.  They are more like gods summoning mini hurricanes above their rotating garlic skinned wings and thus lift off.
God must create little storms of power above my tattered and faith flexed wings.  The honeybee does not tire like me, but we both by God's mystery and grace fly on to the next flower.  

"The February sunshine steeps your boughs and tints the buds and swells the leaves withing." ~Bryant

Yes, the buds of the fruit trees are breaching their wintry hold.  The life and delicate beauty I could never engineer.  I am happy to marvel, sometimes too insecure and scared to involve myself.   Zander is happy to tinker with what all God has give him stewardship over.  The yard is a bonsai challenge and he studies it, prunes it, bends it to his will and also to what he believes to be its natural destiny.  Its nice to have Zander teaching me how to be.  To be.
To be
content yet hungering
convicted yet full of grace
solid yet mysteriously nuanced

I don't intend for him to sit on a throne of sappy compliments :) I do love him, and know that he is because God is.

The humble and ugly dump of concrete God gave was in desperate need of.... a lot
I lamented over what was not.  I wanted to walk in paradise.  I forgot I was walking and more often than not being carried by Paradise Himself.
Honestly, (and gee, zander, I don't know if you're aware of this *wink) but I lust after trees.  I exult their brittle branches to godlike stature.  I could delve into my weird self as to why I do this, but talk about a big yawn for the majority of people. Needless to say, I am a bratty and grateful girl at the moment.